Little Cottonwood Canyon: Utah’s backcountry playground

Photographs by Jack Queen.

This season has not been kind to the ski resorts of Park City, Utah. Over block break, my friends and I encountered brown, bare mountains and dismally covered runs with tufts of grass peeking up between carved-out moguls. Base depth reports of 50 inches seem dubious at best given the snarls of rock plaguing many trails.

Luckily, the vagaries of winter storms consistently provide Little Cottonwood, the canyon just outside of Salt Lake City that is home to Alta and Snowbird, with about twice as much snow as the peaks below. Even better, the narrow channel snaking up into the Wasatch Range is a backcountry paradise, lined with steep chutes that are almost all skiable.

Unlike Colorado’s dry, slide-prone powder, Utah’s snow is generally much more stable, and steep couloirs in the Wasatch that would be unthinkable to ski in Colorado winter were good to go. The avalanche forecast was low for all aspects, save north facing slopes above treeline, and as we made our way up the canyon we giddily pointed out line after line descending from the jagged ridges.

From the Alta parking lot we skinned up to Toledo Bowl, a south-facing playground with excellent views of the skied-out resort. Within minutes we were sweating bullets as the punishing sun glared off of the soft snow, suddenly aware that no one brought sunscreen. After about two hours of climbing the slushy skin track, we reached Flagstaff ridge and, following some deliberation, determined we were several hundreds yards and a whole lot of vertical feet from our intended chute, Holy Toledo. 

No matter. A nice, steep line presented itself on the North aspect, so we ripped skins and dropped in. Here we encountered soft winter powder and linked together fluffy turns to the bottom of a small bowl, relishing the freedom such safe avalanche conditions provide.

Once the revelry was over, we shivered in the shade of the ridge. After hastily re-applying skins, we followed the track back to the ridge.

Higher up, it became steep and icy, and our skins, sopping wet from the slushy south aspect, fared poorly. Kick turns at the switchbacks were miserable and exhausting, and at several points I considered boot packing the rest of the way. I decided to push through on skis, finally regaining the ridge with ungloved hands burning from repeated, flailing tumbles into the snow.

We then climbed to the high point of the ridge and decided we’d had enough skinning for one day. Picking our way down the other side of the ridge we found the entrance to Toledo Bowl and started our second and final run, a series of long, open pitches to the parking lot. The springtime snow on this aspect was a stark contrast to the power on the other side, and it felt as if we’d jumped forward in time to May.

At the parking lot we exchanged fist bumps, quads burning almost as much as our sun-cooked faces.

catalystnewspaper